I get a lot of emails that start something like this, “I’ve looked all over your website, but I can’t find your submission guidelines.” And I usually email back something like, “Well, that’s because we don’t have any. We don’t have guidelines, and we tend not to call them ‘submissions’, since we think of them more along the lines as contributions. So why don’t you just send me something you like that you’ve written, and I can tell you if we’re the right place for you or not.”
(We can do that right now, being so small. Who knows how long that will last? There is, after all, only so much time in a day, and everyone everywhere has their own limits. So I also ask that possible contributors to the magazine be patient when I reach mine.)
Now this is only for “EAP: The Magazine”–EAP books are something else again. For one thing, our publishing program is full up for the next couple of years–yes, indeed, that’s how long it takes to get books out there into the world. But also, we need to get to know our writers before we settle down to work seriously with them, and that takes real time and commitment. We’re a small outfit, and we’re in this for the joy of it, which is a damn good thing, because it doesn’t pay in much else. We don’t look at work that comes in and say, “Eureka! A genius! Rush it to press!” That doesn’t work for us, for a few really good reasons. The main one is that what we love and cherish are hard workers who are also hard headed and realistic about what has to be done to get work–any kind of work–heard. Those people are rare. And that kind of realism develops with a relationship.
Of course, as in any area of life, you can only develop real relationships with a very few people. And each one of those takes its own kind of nurturing. And time. Lots of time.
What we’re not interested in is ‘discovering’ the next genius. We don’t think that genius thing has been too terribly fruitful for the culture at large. Not to mention for the discovered geniuses themselves. Just look at the record. Also, anyone who thinks they are a genius tends to be an incredible pain in the ass to work with. Fact.
So we don’t have submissions guidelines. We’re perfectly happy to receive any kind of courteous, direct, short and to the point communication about anyone’s work, as long as it seeks to find people of like mind, and not people who will help get it rich and famous. Anyone who thinks they’re going to get rich and famous with their books needs to immediately stop wasting their time on this website and click on somewhere else. I’d suggest Time Warner. Or similar. Though I think even Time Warner may have realized they’re not going to get rich with books either.